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Dust and Prayers offers an evocation of love, human and divine, and of the struggles of believers and unbelievers. It depicts something of the human condition apart from God and, through praise and lament, with humor and pathos it speaks of the divine remedy. It speaks of creation, too, and of the Creator, and of humanity (created in God's image), as dust and spirit. Its voice at times is free of the constraints of rigorous poetic forms. At other times its voice is set free by adherence to them. Its cry is biblical: Lord, "I believe; help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24)! It references the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Apostle Paul's letters, and strains to come to terms with God's Holy Presence felt as Holy Absence in, with, under-and in front of-the text. Its hope is grounded in the blessed disturbance with which the Christ, attested in Holy Scripture, proffers the "blessed assurance" that we are his.
About the author
Charles L. Bartow is Egner Professor Emeritus of Speech Communication in Ministry, Princeton Theological Seminary, and pastor emeritus of the Presbyterian Church of Deep Run, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Cries of Earth and Altar: Poems That Couldn't Be Helped.
Ernest Winfield Bartow is professor emeritus of speech communication, Bucks County Community College, Newtown, Pennsylvania. He served pastorates in Maplewood, New Jersey, and Bristol, Pennsylvania. His ThM thesis, "William Stringfellow, Model of a Resurrectional Perceptual Field," was published in the Indiana Speech Journal.
